Orange Juice - in memory of Hinton Battle, Gregg Burge and Gregory Hines
The true tale of a Broadway star and his friend on a difficult night after the show.
Orange Juice
By Jeremy Baumann
My best friend waves to me from the stage; it’s something he always does. People in the audience catch it and wonder who he’s waving to; he’s such a kid, it drives directors nuts.
It’s time for the curtain calls. The cast comes onstage to an escalating avalanche of applause, but my friend holds back and makes them wait. He’s the star. He’s always the star, and he knows how to play the crowd. The orchestra builds to a crescendo, a roar fills the sold out house and around 2,000 people shoot to their feet, cheering and screaming. He’s jaded, but can’t help smile a real smile if only for an instant.
It’s pouring.
Good, only the diehards will wait at the ropes outside the backstage door for pictures and autographs.
We’re in the car.
Somehow he did it. Somehow we did it. He learned the script and choreography and songs and blocking and direction in three weeks. I was flown in and arranged the press and apartment and family and parties and meetings and we did it.
He’s not joking with the driver and I wonder if something’s wrong.
We’re not moving.
The traffic is always backed up after the shows let out and we sit there quietly. That exhaustion has set in, the kind that leaves you blissful and feeling full of accomplishment. Wet teenagers knock so softly on the window for autographs, it sounds like nervous little mice feet. My friend ignores them and it seems like something’s wrong.
We’re moving.
Eighth Avenue is stop-and-go and we’ve never sat in a car this long without talking about something in almost twenty years.
“How was the show tonight, Sir?” Asks the driver.
“It was good, Tom, it was good,” he answers and presses the button to raise the glass between Tom and us. I always think that must hurt the drivers’ feelings, but everyone says it doesn’t. I’m not sure I’d bet my life on it.
I think to pass the time and because I’m too tired to not think. It’s good to be back in New York. Working on another Broadway show feels familiar in that distant way things do when they’re from another time in your life. I haven’t worked for my friend on a show in years, since back before all our friends died, dozens of them. Hundreds of them. All but a few of them. He left New York to do TV and movies and I just left. Planted trees and lived in a VW van in Canada for a year. Opened a restaurant. And now here we are, right back where we started—where we met—on Broadway. And it comes back quickly, like an addiction: the applause and lights and the excitement on the tourists’ faces… all these people from Oklahoma and Idaho and Iowa, states I only know from maps. These fresh-faced people fascinate me with their bright, shining eyes and frozen expressions of star-struckness. Get them backstage and they actually start stuttering. It’s very sweet. America must be such a nice place.
We’re almost at the World Trade Center—where it used to be—and my friend says, “Hey.”
And I say, “Hey,” back.
He smiles a sad smile and I realize something is wrong. Has been wrong. I wanted to think he was just tired.
“You know Gregg?” He says and looks out the window. Stares off in the distance. To Jersey. Or maybe further. To some happier place.
My stomach sinks. He never asks if I know people. Not in a long time, anyway. It feels like a trick. Like if I answer, something terrible will have already happened.
I say, “Yeh, I know Gregg. Wait, Gregory-Greg, that Gregg?”
“Yeh? He died.”
I look out the window towards Jersey, too. I don’t say anything, but I hear a small guttural sound and assume it must have been me. I try to keep the tear from rolling down my cheek.
He asks where I knew him from.
“You introduced us a long time ago. We were backstage… somewhere. You guys did a number together… the Oscars or the Emmys or something. You were good together…”
“You remember that?”
“Yeh, cuz I asked Barbara Eden if I could go home with her.”
“What’d she say?”
“’No.’”
“I remember that,” he says. “It was fun.”
“For you.”
--
We sit at a red light.
I say, “Was he sick? I mean, I can’t believe I didn’t hear anything, nothing.”
He half nods, half shrugs. “Nobody knew. I mean nobody. Hell, I didn’t know until yesterday.”
“Did you spend time… were you with him?”
“Naw, I wanted to be but… you know how things are sometimes.”
Yes. I do. Suddenly the rain on the roof of the car sounds very loud.
We pull into Battery Park City.
I say, “You knew each other a long time.”
“Yeh, we did. Since we were young.”
We pull up to the building and Tom gets out. I never let him open my door, but this time I do, since I either can’t or don’t want to move, I’m not sure which. The door opens. There’s an umbrella.
We get out like very old people. I thank Tom and say goodnight as we walk under the canopy to the front door.
Rain tap dances on the canvas over our heads.
—
Tony-the-Doorman holds the handle, waiting for us to enter, but we just stand there staring at his bizarre Sgt. Pepper’s uniform, and I start to laugh hysterically at it.
“Uh, you okay, Jay?” He asks.
I start to laugh even harder, then suddenly it does that thing like somebody flipped a switch and I’m almost bawling, but catch myself just in time.
“I want orange juice. I wanted orange juice since the theater, but you believe they want eight FUCKING dollars for fresh squeezed at those tourist places in Times Square?” I hear this angry rant and realize it’s probably me.
“Okay,” my friend says softly, looking up sideways at me from his new shoes he’s been studying. He nods, as if we’re discussing something very important.
I say, “You want anything?”
“Nah. Thanks,” he says and looks back down at his shoes.
“How ‘bout some of that lemon pound cake you like?”
He shakes his head no and I tell him I’ll see him upstairs. I walk out from under the shelter and into the downpour, my t-shirt instantly soaked through. It feels good and cool and warm at the same time, stuck to my skin. At the corner I turn to look back. The limo drives by, taps its horn and turns the corner, shooshing away until tomorrow, while my friend stands staring at his feet, transfixed by his shiny new shoes.
“HEY,” I scream over the rain.
He looks up slowly, all the life and passion gone, like the batteries in his face that make him electric and alive have been removed. Standing in front of his house, he looks at me like a little lost boy who doesn’t quite know how to get home.
I want him to want something, but he doesn’t. I want there to be something to say, but there isn’t. A gifted, kind man is dead. My friend has lost his friend, and an era has passed. His peers are now gone. There is nothing to say.
“You gonna’ be all right?” I yell.
He smiles and nods, looks up and around to get his bearings, and heads into the building.
And I head off, tears mixing with rain, to buy some orange juice.
Hinton Battle, Gregory Hines, and Gregg Burge—three of the greatest actor/dancer in Broadway history.
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